Home > Work > The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire
1 " This quickly led to a fatalistic attitude. Company trader William Walker wrote in 1781 that “they are frightened of going nigh one to another as soon as they take bad, so the one half for want of indulgencies is starved before they can gather Strength to help themselves. They think when they are once taken bad they need not look for any recovery. So the person that’s bad turns feeble that he cannot walk, they leave them behind when they’re pitching away, and so the poor Soul perishes.” Many travellers, including such astute observers as David Thompson, wrote of how the men in particular, when under the influence of a raging fever, would throw themselves into the freezing water, and thereby perish from exposure. "
― Stephen R. Bown , The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire
2 " It doesn’t seem that an individual being led through a land by the land’s occupants should count as discovering it, except in a personal sense. Mackenzie and his team should more accurately be called travellers. They were not exploring a land devoid of inhabitants; they were touring distant, populated lands for eastern economic interests. They were discovering new markets, which is not to be sneered at, as these were difficult and dangerous expeditions through geography unknown to them and into lands with people of foreign customs who were not necessarily friendly or welcoming to strangers "
3 " As the shape and interior of the puzzle became clearer, those who possessed this information began to imagine controlling it. Empires exist because they can be conceived. "
